Collaborative Research: Places, Poverty and State Capacity: Local State Responses to Recession and Socioeconomic Well-Being, 2001-2012

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This collaborative research project will examine the degree to which local governments improve socioeconomic well-being across the nation and whether they contribute to recovery following the recession of 2008 to 2011. The impacts of local governments on employment growth, income growth, poverty alleviation, and other socioeconomic indicators will be investigated. The researchers will focus their efforts on tests of three broad-ranging hypotheses: (1) Capacity (size, administrative/fiscal resources, and policy interventions) of local governments is positively related to the well-being of the populations they serve. (2) Capacity is related to countercyclical (proactive) local government responses to the Great Recession. (3) Where local governments took countercyclical responses, future socioeconomic well-being improved. Each of these hypotheses will be addressed for all local governments within county-area units across 50 states and for the county governments. Although county governments exceed federal civilian government in employment size, social scientists have all but ignored them. A local government database constructed by the investigators will be extended for the post-recession period through the use of the Census of Governments and other secondary data. For county governments, unique primary longitudinal data spanning 2001-2008 will be used.The project will have theoretical significance across the social sciences and broad utility for communities and families across the U.S. as they face potential cuts to their local governments in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The project will create a new bridge between political sociology and the longstanding poverty-and-place literature, a tradition addressing subnational disparities that spans sociology, geography, economics, and regional science. The project will address fundamental social science questions about the role of government in promoting public well-being across the nation. It will inform policies aimed at post-recession recovery. Captured in the data are local public employment changes during the Obama stimulus-package period that will enable the researchers to measure their impact on poverty and to also assess whether place-based (locally centered) policies helped in poverty alleviation. The project will provide education and training opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, and it will enhance the data infrastructure for detailed studies of local governments and well-being for future research.